Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“The cleverest character in comedy is the clown, for he who would make people take him for a fool, must not be one.”

“Abundance, even of good things, prevents them from being valued”

“Where envy reigns virtue can't exist, and generosity doesn't go with meanness.”

“Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.”

“You are a coward by nature, Sancho, said don Quixote, yet to prevent you from claiming I am obstinate and never do as you recommend, just this once I shall take your advice and keep my distance from the fury that so frightens you, but on one condition: never, in life or in death, will you tell anyone that I retreated from this peril out of fear, but rather acceded to your entreaties; and if you say anything else, you will be lying, and I give you the lie from now until then and from then until now, and I affirm that you lie and you will lie whenever you think or say it. and do not answer me back; for the mere thought that I am retreating from peril, especially this peril, which does appear to have some faint shadow of fear about it, is enough to make me take my stand here and await alone not only that Holy Brotherhood whose name you speak in such terror but the brothers of the twwelve tribes of Israel, and the seven Maccabees, and Castor and Pollux, and all the brothers and brotherhoods in the world.”

“Didn't i tell you they were only windmills? And someone with windmills on the brain could have failed to see that!”

“In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.”

“Je cherche dans la mort la vie,Dans la prison la liberté,La santé dans la maladie,Dans le traître la loyauté.Mais mon infortune est si grandeQue le destin impatienté,Si l'impossible je demande,M'a le possible refusé.”

“Let's turn now to the citation of authors, found in other books and missing in yours. The solution to this is very simple, because all you have to do is find a book that cites them all from A to Z, as you put it. Then you'll put that same alphabet in your book, and though the lie is obvious it doesn't matter, since you'll have little need to use them; perhaps someone will be naive enough to believe you have consulted all of them in your plain and simple history; if it serves no other purpose, at least a lengthy catalogue of authors will give the book an unexpected authority. Furthermore, no one will try to determine if you followed them or did not follow them, having nothing to gain from that.”

“Have I not already told you', replied Don Quixote, 'that I intend to imitate Amadis, and to act the desperate, foolish, furious lover so as also to imitate the valiant Orlando, when he found signs by a spring that the fair Angelica had disgraced herself with Medoro, and the grief turned him mad, and he uprooted trees, sullied the waters of clear springs, slew shepherds, destroyed flocks, burned cottages, tore down houses, dragged away mares and performed a hundred other excesses, worthy to be recorded on the tablets of eternal fame?' [...] 'But to my mind', said Sancho, 'the knights who did all that were pushed into it and had their reasons for their antics and their penances, but what reason have you got for going mad?' 'That is the whole point', replied Don Quixote, 'and therein lies the beauty of my enterprise. A Knight Errant going mad for a good reason - there is neither pleasure nor merit in that. The thing is to become insane without a cause and have my lady think: If I do all this when dry, what would I not do when wet?”

“It is not the responsibility of knights errant to discover whether the afflicted, the enchained and the oppressed whom they encounter on the road are reduced to these circumstances and suffer this distress for their vices, or for their virtues: the knight's sole responsibility is to succour them as people in need, having eyes only for their sufferings, not for their misdeeds. I came across a rosary of angry, wretched men, I did with them what my religion requires of me, and nothing else is any concern of mine; and to anyone who thinks ill of it - saving, reverend sir, your holy dignity and honorable person - I say that he is no judge of matters of chivalry, and that he is lying like a bastard and a son of a whore, and I swear by my gospel-oath that I will make him acknowledge this with my sword, at length and in extenso.”

“I am not in the habit', said Don Quixote, 'of despoiling those whom I vanquish, nor is it a custom of chivalry to take their horses and leave them on foot, unless the victor has lost his own horse in the fray, in which case it is legitimate to take the defeated knight's horse, as a prize won in lawful war. And so, Sancho, leave that horse, or donkey, or whatever you want to call it, for as soon as its master sees that we have gone he will return for it.'God knows I'd love to take it', replied Sancho, 'or at least swap it for mine, because I don't think mine's such a good one. These laws of chivalry are really strict, if they won't even stretch to letting you swap one donkey for another - could you please tell me if I can at least swap the tackle?'I am not very clear about that', replied Don Quixote, 'and as it is a doubtful case, I should say that until I am better informed you can swap it, if your need is very great.'It's so great', said Sancho, 'that if I'd wanted the tackle to wear it myself I couldn't have needed it more.'And, now that he'd been granted official permission, he performed his mutatio capparum and refurbished his donkey.”

“Spare your breath to cool your porridge.”

“At this the duchess, laughing all the while, said: "Sancho Panza is right in all he has said, and will be right in all he shall say...”

“Oh Senor" said the niece. "Your grace should send them to be burned (books), just like all the rest, because it's very likely that my dear uncle, having been cured of the chivalric disease, will read these and want to become a shepherd and wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease.”

“...he spent whole days and nights over his books; and thus with little sleeping and much reading his brains dried up to such a degree that he lost the use of his reason.”

“Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.”

“There is remedy for all things except death - Don Quixote De La Mancha”

“En un lugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme...”

“Diligence is the mother of good fortune.”

“I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.”

“friend to friend no more draws near, and the jester's cane has become a spear”

“Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world”

“Not with whom you are born, but with whom you are bred.”

“I would do what I pleased, and doing what I pleased, I should have my will, and having my will, I should be contented; and when one is contented, there is no more to be desired; and when there is no more to be desired, there is an end of it.”

“All kinds of beauty do not inspire love; there is a kind which only pleases the sight, but does not captivate the affections.”

“The ability to reason the un-reason which has afflicted by reason saps my ability to reason, so that I complain with good reason of your infinite loveliness.”

“Truly I was born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed.”

“Thou hast seen nothing yet.”

“No se quien es, pero la amo con todo mi corazón y ella me ama de la misma manera...Y hoy mismo saldré a buscarla!”

“There is no book so bad...that it does not have something good in it.”

“It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.”

“¿Qué gigantes?”

“ومع ذلك، وبعد كل ما جرى،فإن الرغبة فى الحياة هى التى تبقينى حيا”

“The wounds received in battle bestow honor, they do not take it away...”

“He who sees a play that is regular, and answerable to the rules of poetry, is pleased with the comic part, informed by the serious, surprised at the variety of accidents, improved by the language, warned by the frauds, instructed by examples, incensed against vice, and enamoured with virtue; for a good play must cause all these emotions in the soul of him that sees it, though he were never so insensible and unpolished.”

“All of that is true,’ responded Don Quixote, ‘but we cannot all be friars, and God brings His children to heaven by many paths: chivalry is a religion, and there are sainted knights in Glory.’Yes,’ responded Sancho, ‘but I’ve heard that there are more friars in heaven than knights errant.’That is true,’ responded Don Quixote, ‘because the number of religious is greater than the number of knights.’There are many who are errant,’ said Sancho.Many,’ responded Don Quixote, ‘but few who deserve to be called knights.”

“Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.”

“A tooth is much more to be prized than a diamond.”

“All I know is that so long I am asleep I am rid of all fears and hopes and toils and glory, and long live the man who invented sleep, the cloak that covers all human thirst.”

“Here lies a gentleman boldWho was so very braveHe went to lengths untold,And on the brink of the graveDeath had on him no hold.By the world he set small store--He frightened it to the core--Yet somehow, by Fate's plan,Though he'd lived a crazy man,When he died he was sane once more.”

“To think that the affairs of this life always remain in the same state is a vain presumption; indeed they all seem to be perpetually changing and moving in a circular course. Spring is followed by summer, summer by autumn, and autumn by winter, which is again followed by spring, and so time continues its everlasting round. But the life of man is ever racing to its end, swifter than time itself, without hope of renewal, unless in the next that is limitless and infinite.”

“A bad year and a bad month to all the backbiting bitches in the world!...”

“And thus being totally preoccupied, he rode so slowly that the sun was soon glowing with such intense heat that it would have melted his brains, if he'd had any.”

“Good painters imitate nature, but bad ones spew it up.”

“Seine Ehre kann auch der Arme behalten, nicht aber der Schlechte.”

“My heart is wax molded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain.”

“Puede haber amor sin celos, pero no sin temores. ”

“La pluma es la lengua del alma: cuales fueren los conceptos que en ella se engendraren, tales serán sus escritos.”

“Amor y deseo son dos cosas diferentes; que no todo lo que se ama se desea, ni todo lo que se desea se ama.”